Doctor Who: Players: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Dicks, Terrance

  The Doctor looked round. ‘Where is he?’

  Dekker turned his coat collar down and then up again and scratched his chin.

  The tubby little man reappeared.

  ‘How does he do that?’ asked the Doctor, feeling the situation spiralling ever further out of his control.

  ‘Damned if I know. You only see the Op when he wants you to see him. Where’s the heap, Jimmy?’

  The Op jerked his head towards the nearest corner.

  ‘Maybe we better go in the Op’s jalopy,’ said Dekker. ‘The Rolls is kinda conspicuous for this operation.’

  They followed the Op around the corner and squeezed into an ancient Morris saloon. The Op got behind the wheel. ‘Where to?’

  ‘17 Carlton House Terrace,’ said Dekker. ‘We’re going to invade Germany!’

  Peri’s interrogation was taking place in the back sitting-room, a high-ceilinged room with files piled high on wooden trestle tables. Presumably, thought Peri, they hadn’t got the dungeon fitted out yet.

  Von Ribbentrop himself was handling the proceedings. He had changed into his black SS uniform specially for the occasion, a design intended to strike terror into the heart of any victim. In Nazi Germany perhaps it would have worked. Peri, however, wasn’t impressed. He looked like a reject from some cheap war movie. She’d had enough. The folding wooden chair she’d been pushed into was hard and uncomfortable.

  A thuggish-looking SS man, the one who’d slugged her, stood on guard at the door, just as when she’d been bundled out of the car into this crummy room.

  Von Ribbentrop had then vanished. Nobody had spoken to her.

  Peri had waited and waited. No doubt all this was supposed to break down her morale. Peri had just got bored, and mad.

  Eventually, von Ribbentrop had reappeared, this time dressed up in all his military glory. Now, Peri looked up at him and yawned.

  ‘Why the fancy dress?’

  Von Ribbentrop was scandalised. ‘This is the uniform of a Gruppenfuehrer, a general in the SS. The rank was awarded to me by the Fuehrer in person!’

  ‘Well, enjoy it while you can,’ said Peri. ‘When he finds out what you’ve been up to he’ll probably bust you down to corporal. What do you mean by kidnapping an innocent American citizen?’ She remembered the Doctor’s story at the bank. ‘A very wealthy and important American citizen, too.’

  ‘Nonsense. You are an American agent. It is useless to repeat your cover story. We have checked and it is full of holes. There is no American millionaire by the name of Capability Brown. The only person of that name our researchers uncovered was an English landscape gardener of the eighteenth century.’

  Mentally cursing the Doctor’s weird sense of humour, Peri said, ‘We wealthy heiresses never travel under our real names. We always use an alias, it keeps off the fortune hunters.’

  Von Ribbentrop eyed her narrowly. ‘What, then, is your real name?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Peri airily. ‘It might be Rockefeller, or it might be Rothschild. You’ll find out. And when you do, you’ll be in trouble. Daddy will probably buy Berlin and pave it over for a parking lot.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said von Ribbentrop, a little uneasily.

  Feeling on shaky ground, Peri hurried on. ‘What’s more, my guardian, Doctor Smith, is an important diplomat.’

  ‘That too is a lie,’ stated von Ribbentrop, with pleasure. ‘Our geographers can find no such country as the Republic of Santa Esmerelda.’

  ‘It’s a very small country,’ said Peri helpfully. ‘About twice the size of Hyde Park. North-north-west of Paraguay, I believe. You could easily miss it.’

  ‘More nonsense!’ shouted von Ribbentrop. ‘You are foreign agents, spies and saboteurs, enemies of the Reich! Now, for the last time, I want the truth. Who are you, and who is the Doctor? What is your real mission here?’

  Peri didn’t reply.

  ‘You will do well to answer my question,’ said von Ribbentrop. ‘Remember –’

  Peri said, ‘You’re not actually going to say it, are you?’

  The interruption made von Ribbentrop stumble in his tirade. ‘Say what?’

  ‘“We have ways of making you talk!” And anyway, you haven’t used, “We will ask the questions!” yet. Isn’t that supposed to come first?’

  Von Ribbentrop looked so baffled, so helplessly angry, that Peri almost felt sorry for him. She burst out laughing. ‘It’s no good. You’d better stick to the garden fêtes and lunch parties. You’re not cut out for this sort of thing. You’re just not scary enough.’

  ‘Am I not?’ snarled von Ribbentrop. He calmed himself. ‘Well, perhaps not. I am, after all, a gentleman. But I have those on my staff who are – what was your word – scary…’ He nodded towards the thug on the door. ‘Take Sergeant Schultz, here.’

  ‘Your expert on socking people with truncheons? You take him.’

  ‘Precisely. You have already sampled his ministrations. A caress behind the ear, a few minutes’ dizziness. A firmer tap, half an hour to an hour’s sleep. But Sergeant Schultz has other talents.’ A note of gloating cruelty came into von Ribbentrop’s voice. ‘A sharp tap on the knee, the elbow, the shins, the bridge of the nose – such blows as these produce intolerable pain. I have seen men – and women too – screaming with agony under Sergeant Schultz’s – caresses.’

  He turned and beckoned and the squat figure of Sergeant Schultz came forward. He slapped a rubber truncheon in to his palm, and Peri jumped.

  Von Ribbentrop leaned forward. ‘You see, Miss Brown,’ he whispered. ‘We really do have ways of making you talk.’

  Peri didn’t answer. Suddenly nothing was funny any more.

  ‘Will you answer my questions? Or shall I leave you to the good sergeant?’

  Ribbentrop leaned forward, his face close to hers. Peri flinched. She could smell his too-powerful cologne, he must have slapped more on specially for the interrogation. Nice.

  Again the rubber truncheon slapped into Schultz’s palm.

  ‘Well?’

  There came a sudden tremendous hammering at the front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  RAID

  CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE at dusk looked as aristocratic as it sounded. It was a street of impressive mansions, most of them detached and standing in their own grounds.

  Jimmy’s shabby little car definitely lowered the tone as it crawled past the opulent houses. Apparently quite untroubled by this, the Op parked the car and pointed across the street.

  ‘Seventeen!’

  Dekker was in the front seat beside him, the Doctor in the back. The car was so small that both had their knees under their chins.

  Number seventeen was just as impressive a building as its neighbours, but it had a shabby and deserted air. There were shutters up at the windows and the heavy wooden front door was scratched and faded. The Doctor guessed it was a disused Foreign Office house, on loan to the German government until their own embassy was redecorated. Redecorated, presumably, in a style sufficiently grandiose to satisfy von Ribbentrop’s vanity.

  It had been cunning of Peri’s captors to put her in von Ribbentrop’s charge. As long as this house was technically an embassy, it was covered by diplomatic status. Even with evidence that Peri was being held there – and the Op’s testimony was all they had – it would be impossible for the lawful authorities to demand entrance.

  ‘Jimmy watched the place for a while after they took Miss Brown inside,’ said Dekker. ‘Says it seemed pretty deserted, not much coming and going.’

  ‘Von Ribbentrop won’t have his full staff over here yet,’ said the Doctor, thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we won’t have too many to deal with.’

  He wondered if the half-dozen failed SS assassins had made it back to London yet. They weren’t the sort of people one could easily reason with, and he doubted they’d respect a pacifist stance. In any case, a full-scale battle with machine-guns in Carlton House Terrace… it simply wouldn’t do.

  Dekker’s voi
ce interrupted the Doctor’s musings. ‘What do you say, Doctor? Are we going in?’

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ said the Doctor. ‘I don’t like to think of Peri in Nazi hands. And a quick commando-style raid stands a better chance than an attack in force.’ He looked at Dekker and the Op. ‘You two don’t have to come, you know. This is highly illegal!’

  ‘Try and keep me away,’ said Dekker. ‘How about you, Jimmy? You in?’

  The Op nodded. ‘Yep.’

  ‘OK,’ said Dekker. ‘How about we use the old speakeasy routine?’

  ‘Right,’ said the Op.

  ‘Speakeasy?’ repeated the Doctor.

  ‘Jimmy and me hadda crash our way into quite a few illegal booze joints in Chicago. We developed a kinda routine. Got the bag, Jimmy?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The Op fished a carpetbag from under the front seat and put it in Dekker’s lap. Dekker opened it to reveal an assortment of gleaming tools. He fished out a large crowbar and a small sledgehammer and passed them over to the Doctor.

  ‘That oughta do it. Got a bottle?’

  Jimmy produced a bottle of bourbon.

  ‘Nearly full too,’ said Dekker. ‘Pity to waste it.’ He opened the bottle and took a swig, offered it to the Doctor who shook his head, then handed it back to the Op, who took a swig himself and then tipped a little down his own shirtfront.

  ‘OK, Jimmy, drive over and park right outside the door – we may need the motor for a quick getaway.’

  As the car pulled away, Dekker briefed the puzzled-looking Doctor on the speakeasy technique.

  ‘Remember,’ he concluded, ‘it all depends on speed. You gotta get them confused, hit them quick and hard, be in and out before they know what’s happening. Got it?’

  ‘Yep!’ said the Doctor.

  The car drew up outside number seventeen and they all got out.

  At the same moment as the banging on the door started, a telephone on a table in the corner started to ring. The sound echoed clamorously through the big empty room.

  There was still more hammering on the front door, and a voice raised in a raucous shout.

  Doubly distracted, von Ribbentrop dithered for a moment. He stopped threatening Peri, straightened up, and crossed over to the telephone.

  ‘Go and see who it is, Schultz,’ he yelled. ‘Tell them we will call the police if they don’t go away!’

  Pretty cool for a kidnapper, thought Peri, left alone on her chair. She listened as von Ribbentrop lifted the receiver and started speaking.

  ‘Yes, I understand. The list? Yes, of course I have the list. I shall hand it personally to the Fuehrer on my next trip to Berlin… Of course I am aware of its importance, it never leaves my person.’

  He tapped the top pocket of his tunic, and Peri heard the crackle of folded papers.

  Moving as quietly as she could, Peri got to her feet…

  Sergeant Schultz opened the front door to find himself facing a small, drunken man, reeking of bourbon whisky and brandishing a bottle.

  ‘Hey, buddy!’ yelled the little man. ‘Where’s the party? Look, I gotta bottle! Where’s the party?’

  Typically decadent American, thought Schultz scornfully. In his slow, careful English he said, ‘This is the German Embassy. There is no party here. You will please go away, or the police I will immediately summon.’

  The little man gave him a wounded look. ‘Hey, don’t be that way! Here, have a drink!’

  He staggered forward, reeling past Schultz and right into the Embassy hallway. Schultz grabbed him by the lapels to throw him out, but the little man was surprisingly hard to shift.

  Letting him go, Schultz reached for his rubber truncheon, but stopped, suddenly, as a gun was violently pressed against his ear. The holder of the gun had slipped, unnoticed, through the open doorway as Schultz had been concentrating on the drunken party-goer.

  ‘OK, where’s the girl? The American girl. Talk, or I’ll blow your head off!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said von Ribbentrop. ‘Tomorrow night. Everyone will act at the signal from the Fort. Very well, Count. Yes, I have the girl safe. Goodbye.’

  He put down the phone, turned and saw that the American girl was no longer in her chair. She was standing up, quite close to him, holding the wooden kitchen chair high above her head.

  Von Ribbentrop had just about time to register this before the chair came crashing down…

  Peri stepped back as von Ribbentrop staggered and fell, wondering if the history books ever mentioned the fact that he was seen in high society for a while with a big red bump on the top of his head. She hesitated, wondering which way to go, looking at the open door. She didn’t want to run into Schultz and his ‘vays of making her talk’.

  She became aware that the hammering and shouting at the front door had stopped, succeeded by a sinister silence.

  Turning, she looked at the other end of the long room. There was a door there too. Maybe she could find a back way out.

  She ran across and tried it. It was locked.

  Peri ran back to the centre of the room, biting her lip as she looked for something to break down the door. There was nothing. Footsteps were fast approaching. She felt a surge of panic and glanced at von Ribbentrop’s fallen body. She was really going to be for it, now.

  Suddenly the locked door burst open with a splintering crash, revealing a somewhat dishevelled Doctor. He was clutching a sledgehammer and a crowbar.

  ‘No wonder they call it housebreaking!’ he said.

  Peri rushed over and hugged the Doctor as he looked round the room, taking in the splintered chair and the unconscious von Ribbentrop.

  ‘In the good old days, the heroine screamed and waited to be rescued,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Are you all right, Peri?’

  ‘More or less!’ She looked down at von Ribbentrop. ‘Is he all right?’

  The Doctor put down his housebreaking tools on a table, went over to the body, knelt beside it and felt for the pulse in the neck.

  ‘He’ll survive. Well, come along, Peri. Let’s not hang about here chatting!’ He picked up his tools and moved towards the door that led to the hall.

  ‘There’s a nasty type with a rubber truncheon that way,’ warned Peri.

  ‘I rather imagine Dekker’s taken care of him. We make quite a cavalry all told! Come on.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Peri. She knelt beside von Ribbentrop and unbuttoned the top button of his tunic, taking out several sheets of folded flimsy paper.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘I think it’s some kind of list. He was talking about it to the Count on the phone. It seemed to be pretty important.’

  ‘The Count, eh?’ The Doctor nodded. ‘And the Countess with him?’

  ‘And they haven’t aged a day.’

  The Doctor sighed, his face grave. ‘Is the list for the Count?’

  ‘No,’ said Peri. ‘Ribbentrop was going to deliver it to Hitler himself.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said the Doctor. ‘Hang on!’

  Putting down his tools again he snatched some sheets of flimsy paper from the table and studied them.

  ‘Yes, this should do the trick. A list for a list!’

  He folded the flimsy sheets to the exact size of the papers Peri had taken, put them in Ribbentrop’s tunic pocket and buttoned it neatly.

  ‘When one comes across some top-secret information,’ he hissed in a pantomime whisper, ‘it’s always better if they don’t immediately know you know!’

  Straightening up, he grabbed his crowbar and sledgehammer, and he and Peri ran though the door.

  *

  ‘This is your last chance,’ snarled Dekker. ‘Tell me where the girl is or I’ll blow your brains all over the ceiling!’

  Sergeant Schultz was, no doubt, cruel and stupid, but he was evidently no coward. He clamped his jaw shut and prepared to die a glorious death for Fuehrer and Fatherland.

  Since he wasn’t actually prepared to shoot Schultz in cold blood, Dekker was st
umped.

  ‘Let me smack him around a little,’ said the Op.

  Dekker shook his head. ‘No time.’

  ‘So shoot him!’

  ‘No need to go to extremes, Me Dekker,’ said the Doctor. Dekker turned and saw Peri and the Doctor crossing the hall towards them.

  Instantly, Dekker slammed the point-45 against the side of Schultz’s head and the SS man dropped to the ground. ‘Let’s get outta here!’

  As Dekker put the automatic back into his shoulder holster, a voice from above called, ‘Halt! Nobody move!’

  They looked up and saw von Ribbentrop’s burly SS driver, standing at the top of the stairs. He was covering them with a Luger.

  Dekker moved for his gun, but the Op was quicker and fired first.

  The SS man staggered back, but didn’t fall. Changing the Luger to his left hand, he fired. The bullet went over their heads. He was about to fire again when a bullet from Dekker’s point-45 blasted him off his feet.

  Dropping the Luger, he rolled down the stairs and lay still.

  ‘Guess it just wasn’t his day,’ said Dekker, looking down at his diminutive colleague. ‘You only just beat me!’

  ‘Shaded you by a clear quarter-second.’

  Dekker looked down at the revolver in the Op’s hand. ‘Still using that point-38 peashooter, I see. Why don’t you get a decent-size gun?’

  ‘Don’t need a cannon when I can shoot straight!’

  ‘Gentlemen, please,’ said the Doctor. ‘Perhaps we could save the technical discussions till later?’

  They hurried out of the Embassy, slamming the door behind them.

  As the Op got into the car and started the engine, the Doctor said, ‘Thank you, Mr Dekker. Your friend saved our lives.’

  ‘The Op’s the best,’ said Dekker, opening the front passenger door. ‘He could have put a slug between the guy’s eyes, or clean through either one.’

  ‘Charming,’ shuddered Peri. ‘So why didn’t he?’

  ‘My fault,’ said Dekker. ‘I told him the client didn’t like killing!’ He turned to the Doctor. ‘I aimed for his right shoulder, but I can’t promise you he’s still alive. Sometimes you don’t get much choice.’

  ‘I know,’ said the Doctor, sadly. ‘Believe me, I know. Let’s get away from this place.’